Illustration Of The Influence Of War On Men In The Things They Carried By Tim O’brien
“Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest” (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, A Mighty Endeavor)
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien offers a glimpse into the change ordinary men go through when exposed to the brutal realities of war. The novel is divided into small snapshots of the war, these division heavily express the trauma and change that occurs to these young men as the war rages on. In the novel three main characters are greatly affected by the mindless killing and subsequent guilt that haunts them, these characters are Tim O’Brien, Kiowa and Norman Bowker in the “Man I Killed” sequence we see Tim O’Brien, a pacifist turned soldier out of obligation to his family and country, come to terms with the killing of a Viet Cong foot soldier. The sequence opens with O’Brien describing in vivid detail a slim, dead, almost dainty young man who is the first life O’Brien has ever taken. As he gazes upon the lifeless corpse he imagines an entire life that this man led from his upbringing in the small coastal town of My Khe to the man’s fear of war and love of academics. O’Brien describes the man as “He was not a Communist. He was a citizen and soldier”. O’Brien’s realization of just how human his enemy is shakes him, he begins to think about how it may have not been young man’s choice to fight but a requirement too through his family’s traditions and patriotism.
As O’Brien gets lost in fantasy a squadmate, Azar, arrives and begins to make insensitive remarks about the dead man describing the body as Shredded Wheat and oatmeal, because of the state of the body, before being told to go away by another squadmate Kiowa. Kiowa tries to offer up words of reassurance and solace, Tim O’Brien still remains very quietly observant and lost in fantasy until Kiowa offers up “ ‘All right, let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down- you want that? I mean, be honest’ ….. Then later he said, ‘Tim, it’s a war. The guy wasn’t Heidi- he had a weapon, right? It’s a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut out that staring’ ”. Kiowa’s words are meant to inspire hope and calmness in O’Brien by illustrating an us vs them mentality by asking Tim if he would rather be dead instead of the Viet Cong soldier. Shaken through this experience after the war Tim O’Brien write stories about Vietnam to cope with the atrocities he witnessed during the war and the blood of the Viet Cong soldier at his hands.
Kiowa, a Native American soldier and O’Brien’s closest confidant and moral compass amid the heinous atrocities of war. Kiowa is there to help to help Tim O’Brien in his darkest moment, the killing of a Viet Cong soldier, offering Tim a helping and soothing words of solace. O’Brien describes Kiowa’s major character traits by describing “ ‘Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet’ ”. Through this introduction, O'Brien illustrates how Kiowa maintains his culture’s traditions while mixing old customs with new ones. When out on missions, Kiowa gets practical. Kiowa survives by preserving components of his traditional belief system alive within him, and setting aside time to honor his belief system as a part of who he is, even though he is the only soldier who carries that heritage. Kiowa uses his roots and traditions as shelter to protect him in hard times. In a major moment of Tim’s fantasy about the Viet Cong soldier’s life Kiowa interrupts with “The guy was dead the second he stepped on the trail. Understand me? We all had him zeroed. A good kill - weapon, ammunition, everything’ ”. Here Kiowa tries hard to release O’Brien’s feelings of guilt, and substitute them with a firm comprehension that in war death happens. In the chapter “Speaking of Courage” the platoon camps in a sewage field and are later hit by a mortar barrage killing Kiowa, in the chapter “In the Field” the platoon searches for Kiowa’s body only to find it buried in muddy slime. The loss of Kiowa is representative of the senseless and needless tragedies of war, there is no honor or dignity to Kiowa’s death and he becomes just another statistic in war.
Norman Bowker, a quiet unassuming soldier who carries a dairy, is a character indicative of the trauma and damage war can cause to person. Norman blames himself for the death of Kiowa in “Speaking of Courage” Norman says “He released Kiowa’s boot and watched it slide away….. He was alone… Circling the lake Norman Bowker remembered how his friend Kiowa had disappeared under the waste and water”. A post-war O’Brien in the chapter “Notes explains how “Speaking of Courage” had been written in 1975 at the request of Norman who three year later hung himself as he couldn’t cope with the memories of the war. O’Brien describes how Norman had worked many brief jobs as an automotive salesman, janitor, car wash attendant and cook at an local A&W franchise. Although Norman lived with his parents and was supported and treated like a hero the war never ended for him leading him to suicide.
In conclusion The Things They Carried is a book about the consequences and effects exposure to war and killing take on men either by killing them in combat, coping with PTSD by sharing your stories, or feeling the necessity to end it all because it is past toleration. The Things they Carried illustrates the struggle of war and the ensuing guilt as a tremendous burden that men struggle with in each of their own ways.
